Flash 8 Cookbook

13.6. Adding a Form Control for Gathering Numeric Input

Problem

You want to add a form control to your application that allows the user to input a number.

Solution

Use a numeric stepper. Alternatively, you can also use a combo box, list, text input, or input text field.

Discussion

The NumericStepper component is specifically designed to allow the user to select from a sequential range of numeric values. Adding a numeric stepper is quite simple. You can drag an instance of the component from the Components panel to the stage. Then, as with most components, you should give the numeric stepper an instance name using the Property inspector. If the default settings work for your application, you don’t need to do anything else. Otherwise, you should set the parameters for the instance using the Component Inspector panel or the Property inspector.

Numeric steppers have four parameters that you are most likely to configure. The minimum and maximum properties determine the range of possible values for the numeric stepper. The stepSize parameter determines what increment is used between each step. The value parameter allows you to specify the default value. For example, if you want to allow the user to specify a numeric value from 0 to 100 in increments of 5 then you should set minimum to 0, maximum to 100, and stepSize to 5. It should be noted that the possible values are calculated starting from 0 and not from the value specified by the value parameter. For example, you might think that you could ...